As President Bush's most important political counselor, Karl, you do have a
special responsibility to see that the things he says in his press conferences
are accurate. That is, you don't have to negotiate with other Cabinet
officials or with other members of the White House staff on what goes into his
head and comes out of his mouth. I personally think a lot of the problems he
is having now in explaining his decision to war with Iraq are the result of
your failure to bring warning signals to the President when you had the
information" and the access.

It isn't too late to play that role, as you should, even though there will be
screams from the warhawks that you have no business butting in. They did that
before, and it may have had their intended effect. They think National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice should be the sole supplier of the last word
on security issues at the White House. Of course, Condi has consistently
represented the views of the hawks, who were largely responsible for getting
her the job in the first place. The same is true of her deputies, all
disciples of Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.

Here is a segment from the transcript of yesterday's press conference. I'll
show you what I mean, with my comments inserted in italics.

Q. Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to Al Qaeda were a key part of your
justification for war, yet your own intelligence report, the N.I.E. [National
Intelligence Estimate], defined it as, quote, low confidence that Saddam would
give weapons to Al Qaeda. Were those links exaggerated to justify war? Or can
you finally offer us some definitive evidence that Saddam was working with Al
Qaeda terrorists?

A. Yeah. I think, first of all -- remember, I just said we've been there for
90 days since the cessation of major military operations. Now I know in our
world where news comes and goes and there's this kind of instant news and you
must have done this, you must do this yesterday, that there's a level of
frustration by some in the media. I'm not suggesting you're frustrated. You
don't look frustrated to me at all. But it's going to take time for us to
gather the evidence and analyze the mounds of evidence, literally the miles of
documents that we have uncovered. . . .

There is no doubt in my mind, Campbell, that Saddam Hussein was a threat to
the United States security and a threat to peace in the region. And there's no
doubt in my mind that a free Iraq is important. It's got strategic
consequences for not only achieving peace in the Middle East, but a free Iraq
will help change the habits of other nations in the region, which will make
America much more secure. . . .

[JW: The question was about Saddam's links to Al Qaeda. The answer was not
responsive because the President cannot offer any of the links the hawks at
the Pentagon continue to say were there, with no evidence of their own.]

Q. There's a sense here in this country and a feeling around the world that
the U.S. has lost credibility by building the case for Iraq upon sometimes
flimsy or, some people have complained, nonexistent evidence. I'm just
wondering, sir, why did you choose to take the world to war in that way?

A. . . . Saddam Hussein was a threat. The United Nations viewed him as a
threat. That's why they passed 12 resolutions. Predecessors of mine viewed him
as a threat. We gathered a lot of intelligence. That intelligence was good,
sound intelligence on which I made a decision. And in order to placate the
critics and the cynics about intentions of the United States, we need to
produce evidence.

[JW: The President continues to cite the dozen UN resolutions passed
between 1991 and 2002 as evidence that Iraq posed a threat. You might explain
that the UN inspectors in these years were essentially trying to verify
Baghdad's insistence that it had no WMD and had abandoned the programs. In all
those years, the inspectors never did find any WMD, only paper trails about
the programs. The UN resolutions were passed when disputes arose between the
inspectors and the government about the modalities of the inspections -- where
they could look and where they couldn't. Each time, Iraq gave way, but each
time the inspectors pressed for more access and more UN resolutions. At the
end of the day and all those resolutions, Iraq had opened the country without
any restrictions at all. You should be alerting the President to the news that
all the senior Iraqi scientists who are now in custody and swearing up and
down, as they have since 1991, that there are no WMD. Only when the President
gets that clear in his head will he begin asking what the heck has been going
on all these years.]

A. And I fully understand that. And I'm confident that our search will yield
that which I strongly believe: that Saddam had a weapons program. I want to
remind you he actually used his weapons program on his own people at one point
in time, which is pretty tangible evidence. But I'm confident history will
prove the decision we made to be the right decision. . . .

[JW: Here again, the President is misinformed. Someone has cautioned him to
use the term "weapons program," because it is true that Saddam had
WMD programs in the 1980's. But he did not, as the President said, use
"his weapons program on his own people at one point in time." I'm
sure it is still in the President's head that Saddam committed genocide
against the Iraqi Kurds, because he had been told that story so often. There
is no evidence of such genocide, Karl, which you could easily discover by
asking the CIA's George Tenet to produce it. The CIA's official position, as
of last October, is that the last time the Iraqi military used chemical
weapons was in March 1988, during a battle at Halabjah, an Iraqi village near
the border with Iran. There is no dispute between the CIA or the Defense
Intelligence Agency on that point. The Iraqi army used the gas against the
Iranian army, which had temporarily occupied Halabjah, and according to the
CIA "hundreds" of people were killed as a result, including Iraqi
civilians caught in the crossfire, as the Iranian army also used gas. A
postwar inquiry by the Army War College determined that the civilians were
killed by Iranian gas.

[By the way, Karl, it is because the President makes so many of these mistakes
in his public utterances that I believe he has never told a lie about why he
did what he did. He is simply repeating the falsehoods that have been fed to
him by the hawks who he assembled to handle these matters. When asked about
Condi Rice in his press conference yesterday, Mr. Bush defended her by saying:
"Dr. Condoleezza Rice is an honest, fabulous person and America is lucky
to have her service. Period." I have no doubt Dr. Rice is "an
honest, fabulous person," but she really should find another post more
suited to her skills. She still doesn't have a clue as to how she was rolled
by the neo-cons.]